¹ This article has grown out of and develops an argument raised in my book Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (Yale Anchor Reference Library; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012)Google Scholar. It was presented at colloquia at Duke University, University of Heidelberg, and Yale Divinity School. I am grateful to the attendees of these lectures, the anonymous readers for Church History, and Joel Baden, Jan Bremmer, and Blake Leyerle for their comments and suggestions.

² Cum disciplina prohibeat, ut quis se ultro offerat, et tuae quoque censurae hoc displiceat; nec offerre se ipsi possunt: sed a te exquisiti invenientur (Ac. Procons. 1.5).

³ Boyarin, Daniel, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 121Google Scholar. For a similar critique of the use of the term “voluntary martyrdom,” see Wypustek, A., “Magic, Montanism, Perpetua, and the Severan Persecution,” in Vigiliae Christianae 51 (1997): 281CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Without a hearty notion of the “martyr” the slight figure of the voluntary martyr is rendered unnecessary. The precise manner in which martyrdom was delineated in the twentieth century, along with the stalwart sense that martyrs are willing but not provocative gave momentum to the creation of this philologically unsubstantial category. It is out of the shadow of extended scholarly discussions about definitions of martyrdom in general that the voluntary martyr has emerged. Very much the runt of the taxonomic litter, the pale, anemic voluntary martyr perches uneasily between suicide and martyrdom and is sustained only by a rigorous sense of what is and is not a martyr.

⁵ Billingsley, Nicholas, Brachy-Martyrologica or A Breviary of all the Greatest Persecutions which have befallen the Saints and People of God from the Creation to our present times (London: Austin Rice, 1657)Google Scholar.

⁶ “Not good, ‘tis not your voluntary act . . . Not actively but passively obey,” Brachy-Martyrologica, 11.

⁷ This is not to say that all would agree. The rhetoric of suicide was employed in order to condemn those martyrs deemed theological and doctrinally acceptable. In these instances the question of truth wound its way to the forfront of the discussion. The criticism of martyrdom as suicide is arguably best known from John Donne's Pseudo-Martyr (London: William Stansby, 1610)Google Scholar, which labels Jesuits suicidal. The debate over true and false martyrs was a heated one in the early modern period, yet volunteerism itself did not appear to carry a heavily negative connotation. For a discussion of this phenomenon in the early modern period, see Monta, Susannah Brietz, Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 134–138Google Scholar.

⁸ Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: A New Edition in Four Volumes (London: Gibbings, 1890)Google Scholar.

⁹ Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1.388, 18n51. Even in his correspondence Gibbon reveals his commitment to the idea that Christians provoked their punishment. In a letter to J. B. Holroyd, esq., written in November 1777, Gibbon describes himself as a martyr for gout, saying, “I suffer like one of the first Martyrs, and possibly have provoked my punishment as much,” Prothero, Rowland E., The Letters of Edward Gibbon (London: John Murray, 1896), 1.321Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Le Blant, E., “Polyeucte et le zèle térméraire,” in Mémoires de l'Institut Nationale de France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 28 (1876): 335–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Dans le camp des chrétiens . . . la foule avait ses entraînements, et, trop facilement parfois, saluait comme des martyres des personages que l’Église se refusait à inscrire au nombre de ses saints” (337). Translated in De Ste. Croix, G. E. M., “Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church,” in Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, ed. de Ste. Croix, G. E. M., Whitby, Michael, Streeter, Joseph (New York: Oxford, 2006), 156CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Le Blant, “Polyeucte,” 335: “Selon les rigoureuses lois de la discipline des anciens âges, Polyeucte ne serait pas un martyr; l'acte même de violence qui a illustré sa mémoire l'exclurait de tout droit à ce titre.” Translated in de Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrs,” 156n4.

¹² Recent scholarship has leaned toward the idea that bishops, and thus “the Church” as an institution, did not have much power or authority until the fourth century. For a recent reassessment, see Bowes, Kim, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

¹³ de Ste. Croix, G. E. M., “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?,” Past and Present 26 (1963): 6–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, 105–52 and “Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church,” 153–200.

¹⁴ De Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?,” 132.

¹⁵ De Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?,” 133. This genealogical thread is implicit in a number of studies, most notably Birley, A. R., “Voluntary Martyrs in the Early Christian Church: Heroes or Heretics,” Cristianesimo nella Storia 27:1 (2006), 108–110Google Scholar.

¹⁶ De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 157.

¹⁷ De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 157. It is surprising to find de Ste. Croix in this role. His monumental Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998)Google Scholar is a triumph of enlightenment Marxist ideology read against early Christian history.

¹⁸ De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 153.

¹⁹ De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 154.

²⁰ De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 169.

²¹ De Ste. Croix's complicated taxonomy also includes “religious suicide,” instances in which a young woman threatened with rape commits suicide rather than give up her chastity. For this terminology and conceptual category de Ste. Croix draws upon Augustine's discussion of suicide in the City of God (1.16–28). There appears to be something of a tension, however, between this ambiguous category of “religious suicide” and the definition of the “quasi-voluntary martyr.” Moreover, we should note that Augustine's writings on suicide in the fifth century mark a new direction in Christian perspectives to martyrdom and are, in part, generated by his encounter with the Donatists. See Dearn, Alan, “Voluntary Martyrdom and the Donatist Schism,” Studia Patristica 39 (2006): 27–32Google Scholar.

²² Droge, Arthur J. and Tabor, James A., A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992)Google Scholar and Droge, Arthur J., “The Crown of Immortality: Toward a Redescription of Christian Martyrdo?” in Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys, ed. Collins, John J. and Fishbane, Michael A. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 155–70Google Scholar.

²³ Droge, “Crown of Immortality,” 155–67.

²⁴ See, for example, Barnes, Timothy D., Tertullian (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 177–78Google Scholar; Knox, Ronald A., Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), 49Google Scholar; Birley, , “Persecutors and Martyrs in Tertullian's Africa,” in The Later Roman Empire Today, ed. Clark, Dido (London: Institute of Archaeology, 1993), 47Google Scholar and discussion in Tabbernee, William, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 84 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2007), 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ On the martyrs of Lyons as adherents of the New Prophecy, see Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 219–24.

²⁶ Barns, T., “The Catholic Epistle of Themiso: A Study of 1 and 2 Peter,” Expositor 6.8 (1903), 44Google Scholar; Kraft, Heinz “Die altkirchliche Prophetie und die Entstehung des Montanismus,” Theologische Zeitschrift 11 (1955): 249–71 [269]Google Scholar; Carringotn, Philip, The Early Christian Church, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Universirty Press, 1957), 2.244Google Scholar.

²⁷ Tabbernee's work in this area cannot be highly enough recommended. See, particularly, “Christian Inscriptions from Phrygia,” in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, ed. Horsley, G. H. R. and Llewelyn, S. R. (Grands Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978), 3.128–39Google Scholar; “Early Montanism and Voluntary Martyrdom,” Colloquium 17 (1985): 33–44Google Scholar; and Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments, 201–42.

²⁸ Trevett, Christine, Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Droge and Tabor, A Noble Death, 152.

³⁰ Brox, Norbert, Zeuge und Märtyrer: Untersuchungen zur frühchristlichen Zeugnis-Terminologie, Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 5 (Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1961)Google Scholar; Baumeister, Theofried, Die Anfang der Theologie des Martyriums, Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie 45 (Münster, Aschendorff, 1980)Google Scholar; Bowersock, Glen W., Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ For example, Lucius in the Acts of Ptolemaeus and Lucius (Justin Martyr, 2 Apology 2). Of course, this argument is somewhat circular. One has to hold a definition of a “voluntary martyr” in order to demonstrate that these voluntary martyrs were treated no differently in early Christianity literature. Nonetheless it is worth pointing out that those individuals identified by scholars as voluntary martyrs receive the same literary treatment as those categorized as martyrs.

³² For lists and discussions of events that scholars have designated as voluntary or provoked martyrdom, see Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrs” and Arthur J. Droge, “The Crown of Immortality,” 155–70; Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 201–42.

³³ The extent to which historiography has used a Roman script to narrate the history of martyrdom goes further than merely voluntary martyrdom. Tacitus and Pliny have become the narrators of the history of Christian martyrdom.

³⁴ The Martyrdom of Potamiaena and Basilides is relayed in Eusebius, Hist. eccl.6.5 and Palladius, Lausiac History 3. The date of the account is contested. Eusebius places the events during the prefectship of Aquila (ca. 205–210), in which case Clement may have left Alexandria before their occurrence. Although scholars assume that Clement deliberately avoids referring to or utilizing this literature, we need to consider the possibility that he was simply unfamiliar with it.

³⁵ The specifics of the persecution in Alexandria are largely unknown. They may have been the result of heightened violence under Septimius Severus who, Eusebius tells us, stirred up violence everywhere (Hist. eccl. 6.1).

³⁶ This term is borrowed from van den Hoek, Annewies, “Clement of Alexandria on Martyrdom,” in Studia Patristica 26, ed. Livingstone, E. A. (Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 327Google Scholar. Many scholars have been charmed by the quiet moderation of Clement's approach. The intellectualism of moderation is a pervasive theme both in Clement's rhetoric and in modern commentary on moderate approaches to martyrdom. Van den Hoek further differentiates Clement's approach from the martyr acts and argues, based on Theofried Baumeister's work, that it can be traced back to Daniel.

³⁷ Bowersock, Glen W., Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Discussions of the Gymnosophists in antiquity refer to them with great respect (Plutarch, Life of Alexander 64; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 9.61, 63). Philo describes them as virtuous philosophers (Every Good Man is Free 74, 92–93). Clement himself describes them as philosophers in Stromata 1.15.71.

³⁹ The interest in knowledge of the true God is a pervasive theme in literature from Nag Hammadi. See, for example, Apocryphon of John and Gospel of Truth. For Gnosticism in general, see Brakke, David, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011)Google Scholar. The characterization of the martyrs as anti-martyrdom is based as much on ancient stereotype as modern scholarly analysis. For recent reappraisals of this issue, see King, Karen, “Martyrdom and Its Discontents in the Tchacos Codex,” in Codex Judas Papers: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Tchacos Codex Held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, March 13–16, 2008, ed. DeConick, April D., Hammadi, Nag and Manichean Studies 71 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2009), 23–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, chapter 6.

⁴⁰ The association of masculinity and courage is philological as well as conceptual and is often remarked upon by scholars of early Christian martyrdom. For a recent discussion, see Cobb, L. Stephanie, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts, Gender, Theory and Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ Boyarin, Dying for God, 62.

⁴² For a discussion of gnostic texts in Clement, see Völker, Walter, Quellen zur Geschichte der Gnosis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1932)Google Scholar; Bolgiani, Franco, “La polemica di Clemente Alessandrino contro gli gnostici libertini,” Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 38 (1967): 86–136Google Scholar; van den Hoek, “Clement of Alexandria, 329–35.

⁴³ The importance of this account for the development of martyrdom has meant that the dating of the Martyrdom of Polycarp is hotly debated. I follow here the arguments of Grégoire, H. and Orgels, P., “La veritable date du Martyre de S. Polycarpe (23 février 177) et le “Corpus Polycarpianum,” Analecta Bollandiana 69 (1951): 1–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Moss, Candida R., “On the Dating of Polycarp: Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity,” Early Christianity 4 (2010): 539–574CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where I argue that the account was composed in the beginning of the third century. Even if these theories are incorrect, the integrity of MPol 4 and the reference to Quintus is shrouded in suspicion. For the argument that MPol 4 is a secondary interpolation, see the classic argument of Freiherr von Campenhausen, Hans, “Bearbeitungen und Interpolationen des Polycarpmartyrium,” reprinted in Aus der Frühzeit des Christentums. Studien zur Kirchengeschichte des ersten und zweiten Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1963), 253–301Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ It should be noted that there is scant manuscript evidence for the Acts of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike (BHL 1662m). This means that we must leave open the possibility that the account was edited by the compiler of the manuscript rather than a posited third-century redactor.

⁴⁵ For the view that Agathonike is Montanist, see John Chapman, “Montanists,” Catholic Encyclopedia 10:523. For the view that she was merely influenced by Montanism, see Lietzmann, Hans, “Die älteste Gestalt der Passio SS. Carpi, Papylae et Agathonices,” in Kleine Schriften I: Studien zur spätantiken Religionsgeschichte, TU, NS 67 (Berlin: Akademie, 1958): 239–50Google Scholar. For the view that Agathonike's death paralleled Montanism, see Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, 272. In all these cases her actions are related to Montanism although nothing other than the fact that she is viewed as a voluntary martyr would suggest this.

⁴⁶ The same point can be made with respect to other early figures deemed “voluntary martyrs.” In the case of Lucius in Justin's Second Apology, Alexander, Attalus, and Vettius Epagathus in the Martyrs of Lyons, Paeon in the Acts of Justin and Proclus in the Acts of Firmus and Rusticus, there is nothing in these narratives that marks their deaths as different from those of the other martyrs in their respective accounts.

⁴⁷ On the date of the Latin version of the account, see Barnes, “Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum,” 514.

⁴⁸ For the importance of flight in Clement's position on martyrdom, see Droge, “Crown of Immortality,” 166; Droge and Tabor, A Noble Death, 143–144; Ritter, A. M., “Clement of Alexandria and the Problem of Christian Norms,” Studia Patristica 18 (1989): 421–39Google Scholar; Boyarin, Dying for God, 63.

⁴⁹ Erasmus, Disputatiuncula de taedio, pavore, tristicia Iesu, trans. Heath, Michael J., in Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. O'Malley, John W. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 65Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ On the relationship between More and Erasmus, see Rogers, Katherine Gardiner, “The Lessons of Gethsemane: De Tristitia Christi,” in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More, ed. Logan, George M. (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2011), 252Google Scholar.

⁵¹ More, Thomas, De Tristitia Christi, volume 14 of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976)Google Scholar reprinted as The Sadness of Christ (New York: Scepter, 1993), 15–16Google Scholar.

⁵² More, De Tristitia Christi, 16.

⁵³ In his On Martyrdom Aquinas himself recognized the tension between the biological goods of self-preservation and truth (the human good). He subtly redefines martyrdom so that only death for “Truth” rather than some vague religious principle can be properly described as martyrdom. For an analysis of Aquinas's views of martyrdom and suicide in the context of the history of ideas, see Leget, Carlo, “Authority and Plausibility: Aquinas on Suicide,” in Aquinas as Authority, eds. van Geest, Paul, Goris, Harm, Leget, Carlo (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 277–94Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ For a further discussion of this issue at it pertains to the construction of martyrdom in the medieval and early modern periods, see Gregory, Brad S., Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 50–62, 97–138Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 406.

⁵⁶ Malalas, John, Chronographia (Bonn: Weber, 1831), 275–276Google Scholar. Malalas is not the only scholar to treat Ignatius as a voluntary martyr. In deconstructing the doctrinal divide between orthodox martyrs and Montanist voluntary martyrs, Christine Trevett also argues that Ignatius handed himself over (Trevett, Christine, A Study of Ignatius of Antioch in Syria and Asia [Lewiston: Queenston and Lampeter, 1992], 61Google Scholar). Trevett cites Smyrn. 4.2 in support of her argument.

⁵⁷ Riddle, Donald W., Martyrs: A Study in Social Control (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932)Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ See discussion in Perkins, Judith, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ Gibbon remarks of Sigismund's epithets saint and martyr, “A martyr! How strangely that word has been distorted from its original sense of a common witness.” Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, (Paris: Baudry, 1840), 4:121Google Scholar cited in Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome, 6.

⁶⁰ Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1.8.